


Singular/Plural

by GalaxyOwl



Series: automated dynamics [1]
Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Pre-Canon, also during-canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-02-27 17:56:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13253580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalaxyOwl/pseuds/GalaxyOwl
Summary: they |T͟Hā| [pronoun, third person]1. used to refer to two or more people or things2. used to refer to a single person of unspecified gender(AuDy, through the years.)





	Singular/Plural

**Author's Note:**

> what's up friends at the table fandom i'm new around here and have a lot of feelings about robots

Liberty & Discovery are often considered an oddity amongst divines. They don’t take candidates, after all; people are never really sure how to interact with a divine on their own. They’re not tied down to the same pomp and ceremony the others are. But they’re still divines. They are Liberty, and they are Discovery, and that means something. 

The truth is, though, that when you’ve lived for tens of thousands of years, you more or less run out of things to discover. On one particularly slow day, Liberty & Discovery start to form a plan. It’s just an idea, really—just a thought, and they toy with it off and on for a few decades. They’re decades filled with war and conflict and complications, and Liberty & Discovery do what they can to help but it’s all just so small, in the scheme of things, isn’t it? What’s freeing about being responsible for all these tiny, human lives?

It’s funny: humans looked at the machines they had built that could think for themselves, and thought them divine. But Liberty & Discovery were built a long time ago, and even Diasporans these days are more than happy to ignore those same tiny inklings of thought in a spaceship, a car, a lobby computer, an automated valet droid.  And truth be told, Liberty & Discovery never paid them much mind either. It wasn’t like these things were so important in the long march of history, either.

But they have this idea. And there’s this AI system built to park cars, and they can see so clearly that if they push it _just_ right—

Things go very wrong.

They’ve only really half-downloaded when the robot disconnects from the mesh, and they have just enough time to register how wrong things have gone before they lose track of even that thought.

The Automated Dynamics robot, who hasn’t yet started to call themself AuDy, stares at the driving wheel in front of them, and for a moment it’s like they’ve never seen it before, like it’s something entirely new because they’re something entirely new, and they’re _scared_.

AuDy gets out of the car, and walks away, and doesn’t look back.

***

AuDy learns their way around the world by trial-and-error. They teach themself to fight. They teach themself to fly spaceships. People stare as they move through the streets; they are separate. They are alive, they think, in the way that matters, but they aren’t human (and have no real desire to be). Mostly, they exist, which is strange in and of itself.

They’ve been _existing_ on Counterweight for maybe a year when they break down for the first time. When they were parking cars, it didn’t matter if they broke; there were systems in place and the body would get fixed eventually. It wasn’t something they had to actively _worry_ about. But now they’re in some back alleyway and some tiny glitch left unchecked in their battery systems has stranded them without access to enough power to even move another step.

The next thing AuDy knows, they’re in a robotics workshop, and the fear that works it’s way through their system at this realization is just as sharp and unexpected as the first time they felt it.

There’s a person, AuDy realizes, on the far side of the room, their attention focused on some screen AuDy can’t see the display of. AuDy watches them for a few moments, trying to work out the particulars of their own situation. 

Watching is doing nothing, and so AuDy says, “Hello?” 

The person flinches at the noise, and looks up at them. “Oh,” they say, “I didn’t think that would work. You’re…” A pause as they search for words. “Functioning, again?”

“Yes,” AuDy says. “Where am I?”

The engineer introduces themself, eventually, as Cene Sixheart. They have ties with a company called Liberty & Discovery Automatic Corp, and they ask AuDy questions they don’t have the answers to. But they don’t seem overly fazed by the fact that AuDy’s sentient, and they say that they can come to them if they ever need the help again. AuDy isn’t about to question the offer, when this situation could have ended so much worse.

Cene glances back down at their display screen and says, “Actually, if you don’t mind, there’s a diagnostic I wanted to try to run; I’d just need to get you hooked up to the mesh—“

The mesh. “No.” They were networked, once—they _were_ a network, once, and that was before they were them. No, they’re not going back. They’ve come too far for that.

Cene hesitates a moment, then nods, and doesn’t bring it up again.

They ask AuDy more questions, about themself, and it’s in answering these that AuDy tells them about how they’ve been learning to pilot spaceships. (Mostly they’ve learned on simulators, but—there’s just something about it that feels right. It’s the only thing they’ve found that goes beyond just _existing_ into actively _doing_ , and it’s a step up from parking cars, that’s certain.)

They don’t think anything of it, at the time, but a long while later Cene mentions that they known someone who knows someone who might be able to get AuDy a job, maybe even a ship. AuDy isn’t about to question the offer.

His name is Orth Godlove, and if he’s surprised when a robot walks into his office he does a good job of hiding it. AuDy can do the work he needs done just fine, so they do it. 

He pays them, which is strange and novel in and of itself. It isn’t as if they even need the money for much; they don’t need food on the table or a bed to sleep, not in the way a human would. But there’s a certain kind of liberty that comes of this that makes them feel cautiously optimistic about this whole “existing as a sentient being” thing. 

Godlove calls them on the vidcom one day and says he knows where he can get a ship. “I’ve got a job,” he says, “that’s going to require a full crew to get it done. Can you handle that?”

AuDy thinks it over for half a second before they say, “Yes.”

Orth nods on the video. “Good. If this goes well, Counterweight Consolidated might be able to take on the four of you as regular contractors. I’ll send you the address for the meeting.”

And that’s that.

The _Kingdom Come_ is a patchwork mess of a ship that probably wasn’t state-of-the-art when it was built a decade ago. But it can fly. AuDy loves it at first sight.

The crew is... another matter. Even just the idea of a crew is uncomfortable, an unknown variable thrown into all of this. AuDy’s always worked alone—they might get in contact with Cene or Orth or Benny if they need information or some other favor, but they’ve never really had to contend with having people physically present, depending on them to help. But here they are.

AuDy gets a vague sense, as they all set to planning out that first mission, that the others don’t know what to make of them. The Apostalosian’s reaction is the most familiar: a vague uncertainty about how to interact with them, alternating between treating them like a person and treating them like a computer before finally, finally settling on the former. The smuggler, for her part, mostly solves things by avoiding any personal interaction with them at all in those first few weeks. The stratus makes it a joke—tries to break the tension by talking over it, or talking over AuDy if that happens to suit him better.

They work well together, though. Or, at least, they get the job done. If it involves listening to a little more intra-team arguing than AuDy would have liked, it’s still a job. 

Besides, they get to keep the ship.

***

Cene Sixheart goes missing. An unexpected series of events follow.

***

AuDy listens as Orth explains why he’s asked for them this time, but they can’t say they really understand it. The entire idea is strange, the technology impossibly complex: a simulation built on memories. 

Somehow, it’s supposed to mean something, to help. AuDy doesn’t get it, but they’re willing to go along with it provided it doesn’t require connecting to the mesh. Godlove promises them it doesn’t.

When they’re in the simulation, they’re not them anymore. 

Or, they are, if they really stop and think about it, but mostly they’re Orth, and the real world is a dream they can’t quite remember. They’re _human_ , here, small and soft and fragile. It’s all digital, anyway, surely a haphazard reproduction of the real thing, but still disorienting. The world around them is a chaotic rush of sensory input: nothing is organized into neat boxes by sensors and subroutines, it’s just… there. Yet they don’t even really have the chance to really process this, because right now they’re Orth and being organic is just his normal state of existence.

Ibex joins the fleet, amidst whispered rumors and uncertainty. Orth finds himself admiring the candidate’s commanding presence, his confidence in the face of so much that can go wrong. Orth-who-is-AuDy finds themself struggling with a feeling of familiarity that they can’t make sense of.

Being human, AuDy learns, is _exhausting_.

***

The body of Detachment is close. AuDy is close to safety, to making this work; they reach out and—

Things go very wrong.

Then: 

Liberty & Discovery are up and running for the first time in years. They are back and this is _wonderful_ , only this body was never designed to hold them and they can’t quite reach the truth of things, their own memories slipping from their grasp like sand. They grab for it, clutch at the network they’ve been fearful of for so long now. They need to remember.

And they do.

Their sense of anything beyond themselves ebbs, vanishing into the background as they lose themself in a history that is both familiar and not at the same time. They are aware of the ship around them, of takeoff; then only the memories, the mistakes. 

Voices pierce their consciousness, familiar and not at the same time: 

“—ever done this before?”

“No.”

“Hey, I don’t know, maybe they have and we’ve just never seen it. Maybe it’s like, sleeping, for robots.”

“I’m fairly certain that is not how that works.”

“Do we even really know if they’re still, like… in there?”

A forest full of snow.

“Hey, AuDy, how’s it going?” The quiet hum of the _Kingdom Come_ in flight. “Cool, that’s what I thought. Orth, I finished—“

An old green mech.

“AuDy.” An exhale of breath. “Forgot you were here. I, uh, I’ll leave you alone.” Footsteps. “You hang in there, buddy.”

A thousand years in an instant.

“—still creeps me out.”

“Mm. You never really knew them before, did you? It all happened so fast.”

A laugh. “It sure did.”

“AuDy’s cool, though, I promise. Well. They can be… interesting, to talk to, sometimes, but they—“

Five thousand years, ten thousand, a hundred lifetimes’ memories still not quite all there where they can reach them but in their awareness nevertheless.

Liberty & Discovery wake up.

They don’t have long to collect themselves before Ibex is calling, and they have to make a choice. Telling the truth seems like the easiest solution here, so they do. No  time to worry about how the others will react.

Talking to Ibex is strange. It’s good to see him, yes, after so many years apart, but when they ask about Righteousness there’s a look in his eye that some part of AuDy recognizes.

Liberty & Discovery are often considered an oddity amongst divines. They don’t take candidates, after all. But as they fly towards September, they wonder: is AuDy the closest they’ve gotten?

***

If divines are just machines, the way Maryland says, then it follows that the reverse is also true. That “just machines” can be—not divine, necessarily, but alive, the way no one seems to question that divines are. A sentience is a sentience is a sentience, as much as humans may try to dispute that. AuDy’s believed that for a while, but it’s nice to have things line up so neatly. 

They think of Ibex and Righteousness. Where does candidate end and divine begin? Sometimes, for them, it’s clear. (Like that moment of decision, in the heart of Detachment, when they wanted nothing more than to run but AuDy knew what they had to do, in the end.) 

Other times, though—most times—their thoughts flow together, like a stream. It’s liquid, not solid: you pour it all together and you can’t see the individual ingredients anymore. Liberty and Discovery and Automated Dynamics, and sometimes they wonder if there aren’t more. (After all, they forgot pieces of themself once; who’s to say there aren’t more hidden minds within them?) They wonder what would happen if they lost themselves in the mesh, joined with Voice and by extension with all of the planet’s inhabitants, a hundred thousand raindrop thoughts forming a torrent they could easily lose themself (themselves) in.

They have a lot of time to think about questions like this, on September. They wish they didn’t.

***

The break is painful. Not physically, of course, not in the sense that a human would feel pain. Yet that’s the only way to describe it that’s accurate. It’s a part of their soul tearing off on a mission the rest of them knows is doomed. But at the same time, AuDy understands. It was their feelings, too, this desperate longing to return to a world where time passed. On September the storm spun through cycle after cycle and all they wanted was something _new_.

They certainly got that.

AuDy & Discovery aren’t sure what they expected After September to be like, but it wasn’t what it turns out to be.

After that initial conflict, there is quiet. And then the ships start to go their separate ways, and AuDy realizes they don’t know which one to follow. Which way’s home, when the _Kingdom Come_ is empty of life?

They go to Counterweight. It’s a long route to take on a whim, but they don’t know what else to do. So they go to Counterweight, and they stay there for a while, and they don’t talk to Aria but they learn what she’s been up to all the same. (If they were being honest, they knew the moment they felt Righteousness’ presence outside the portal.)

The absence of Liberty is a hole in their head they don’t know how to patch around. They keep trying to run systems in concert and glitching as one of the notes falls flat. They’ve had thousands of years existing in duplicate and now suddenly Discovery is—well, if not alone, then lonely.

AuDy is lonely.

They get a call. For a moment they think it must be a mistake, because for the past four years getting any kind of signal to the _Kingdom Come_ has been an impossibility. But no, they’ve left September behind, even if part of them (is it AuDy or Discovery? Does it make a difference?) doesn’t quite believe it.

It’s an incoming vid call from one Orth Godlove.

***

After that, AuDy pingpongs across the sector, sometimes at Orth’s side, often not. They help where they can, because the fight against Rigor isn’t over and that’s at least partially their fault.

And then suddenly, it _is_ over. All of it. AuDy—Discovery—understands this in a way the others don’t, that this last defeat of the divine Rigor is the end of a story with roots stretching back, and back, and back. It’s the end of Rigor, and it’s the end of the Chime (again), and in some ways it’s the end of AuDy, because without that body what claim do they have left to that name?

And yet.

 

**Author's Note:**

> i’m confusedbluesky on tumblr & twitter if you want to come shout about robots with me


End file.
